Ten years ago, my alcohol addiction was so severe that I needed alcohol in my bloodstream twenty-four hours a day, otherwise I would suffer severe physical and mental withdrawal symptoms. That level of addiction is what I will try to describe. As a simple description, being an alcoholic is like trying to balance out a seesaw. On one side of the seesaw sit the withdrawals. I needed to drink in the morning to feel ‘normal’ again. If I could drink just enough to eliminate the withdrawal symptoms, I could pass as functional and get on with my day. But alcohol addiction doesn’t work like that. Once I started to feel ‘balanced’, I couldn’t resist the urge to continue drinking. Consequently, the seesaw became weighted down on the opposite side as I got drunker and less able to function. This is how the cycle continued day by day. On a more personal note, as an alcoholic, I was terrified, lonely, and ashamed. I was absolutely petrified. I understood that I was physically and psychologically addicted to alcohol but there was a distressing element to the addiction that overpowered my free will. It was as if I’d been possessed by an external force that was controlling my actions. I felt a strange sensation of being an observer of my own actions. I saw myself buying and drinking alcohol, wishing that I could just make myself stop. It was like I still existed within myself, but I had been suppressed and silenced while addiction held the reigns. Alcoholism created a heightened state of anxiety in me. I was on the verge of a panic attack most of the time. I woke each day after four hours sleep to tremors, shakes and a racing heart. Then the panic set in; I needed to find the alcohol I had stashed the night before, desperately hoping that there was some left in the bottle. My waking hours would be spent obsessing over the next drink, specifically where I would get it from and when would I be able to drink it. The only time I felt calm was when I passed out or fell asleep again.
I felt totally alone in addiction. I have never felt a loneliness like it since. As I hadn’t spoken to anyone other than my husband about my alcoholism and we were both struggling to understand it, I felt like this was a very personal nervous breakdown with symptoms exclusive to me. I thought I had lost my mind, and would never get better. My husband’s support didn’t ease how lonely my experience of addiction was. It was only when I attended AA in sobriety that I realised how universal my experience was among alcoholics. And I was so ashamed. I was ashamed that I had become an alcoholic, that I had brought it on myself, and that I didn’t have the willpower to stop drinking. When I allowed myself to envisaged recovery, I felt the burning shame of everyone knowing that I didn’t drink anymore because I was an alcoholic.
